CSDC 397

Authority must recognize, respect and promote essential human and moral values. These are innate and “flow from the very truth of the human being and express and safeguard the dignity of the person; values which no individual, no majority and no State can ever create, modify or destroy”.⁸¹² John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, 71: AAS 87AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 87 (1995) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1995), 483. These values do not have their foundation in provisional and changeable “majority” opinions, but must simply be recognized, respected and promoted as elements of an objective moral law, the natural law written in the human heart (cf. Rom 2:15), and as the normative point of reference for civil law itself.⁸¹³ Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, 70: AAS 87AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 87 (1995) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1995), 481- 483; John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris: AAS 55AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 55 (1963) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1963), 258-259, 279-280. If, as a result of the tragic clouding of the collective conscience, scepticism were to succeed in casting doubt on the basic principles of the moral law,⁸¹⁴ Cf. Pius XII, Encyclical Letter Summi Pontificatus: AAS 31AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 31 (1939) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1939), 423. the legal structure of the State itself would be shaken to its very foundations, being reduced to nothing more than a mechanism for the pragmatic regulation of different and opposing interests.⁸¹⁵ Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, 70: AAS 87AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 87 (1995) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1995), 481- 483; John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, 97, 99: AAS 85AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 85 (1993) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1993), 1209- 1211; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life (24 November 2002), 5-6, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City 2002, pp. 11-14.